The Edu:Social School Study 2 is a randomized controlled trial designed to evaluate the effects of an 8-week socio-emotional, partner-based empathy-compassion Dyad training program (EmCo) compared with a mindfulness-based training (MBT) and a waitlist control group (WLC) in school teachers. The primary objective is to assess the efficacy of the adapted 8-week online EmCo Dyad training program across multiple domains of teacher functioning. Seven domains capture individual-level outcomes: (1) mental health, (2) resilience, (3) attention and cognitive processes, (4) social emotions, (5) stress coping and emotion regulation, (6) listening skills, and (7) voice-based emotional expression (DYVA). Two additional domains assess broader contextual outcomes: (8) classroom teaching and (9) organizational/school level outcomes, reflecting how individual-level changes may translate into perceived changes in the teaching and school context. To this end, participants will be randomized into one of three groups: (1) an 8-week EmCo Dyad intervention (EmCo), (2) an 8-week mindfulness-based training program (MBT), or (3) a waitlist control group (WLC) that will receive the EmCo intervention after completion of the initial post-test. Both interventions are delivered online via a dedicated study application to ensure scalability and accessibility. A second aim is to validate the Egocentric Social Network Analysis Paradigm (e-SNAP) as a measure of teachers' perceived social interactions and network structures. This study represents the first randomized controlled trial in teachers to examine whether changes in internal psychological processes are associated with perceived changes in the perception of the quality of interaction between school teachers and their students in the classroom as well as between school teachers and their colleagues in school. A third aim is to introduce and validate objective measures of emotional processing based on AI-based voice analysis in educational field research. Specifically, the study will evaluate two tasks using different parameters of AI-based emotional voice analysis: (a) the Teacher Voice Assessment (TEAVA), in which teachers' voices are recorded during a teaching-related task, and (b) the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA), conducted during the daily partner-based Dyad practice. In both tasks, non-semantic vocal features (e.g., pitch, loudness, speaking rate, intonation) and vocal emotional expressions (e.g., arousal, valence, dominance, and basic emotional categories) will be analyzed using audEERING devAIce software. No speech content will be transcribed or analyzed. A final aim is to investigate the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying intervention-related changes. Based on prior research, the EmCo Dyad training is expected to enhance care- and affiliation-related motivational systems associated with positive affect, social emotions and connectedness, and prosocial behavior, while reducing loneliness, social stress, and other forms of psychological vulnerability. In contrast, mindfulness-based training is expected to primarily strengthen attention- and thought-related processes, including present-moment awareness, calming the mind and executive attentional control. These mechanisms are expected to contribute to improvements in mental health and overall well-being across both intervention groups.
Age range
18 Years – 68 Years
Sex
ALL
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Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
UCLA Loneliness Scale (UCLA)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
Connor Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
Types of Positive Affect Scale (TPAS)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
Executive control (Flanker Task; FT)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
Mind-Wandering
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
Socio-Affective Video Task (SoVT)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
Sussex-Oxford Compassion Scale for Self and Others (SOCS)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
Prosodic Feature Pitch
Timeframe: Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Prosodic Feature Loudness
Timeframe: Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Prosodic Feature Speaking Rate
Timeframe: Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Prosodic Feature Intonation
Timeframe: Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Affect Dimensions of Vocalized Emotional Expressions
Timeframe: Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Affect Categories of Vocalized Emotional Expressions
Timeframe: Assessed weekly from week 1 to week 8, as part of the Dyad Voice Assessment (DYVA)
Stress intensity
Timeframe: Assessed using an EMA design with five push-notification measurements per day, distributed across five 3-hour intervals, on four days within a two-week period, at pre-test (Baseline) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-intervention).
Coping strategies
Timeframe: Assessed using an EMA design with five push-notification measurements per day, distributed across five 3-hour intervals, on four days within a two-week period, at pre-test (Baseline) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-intervention).
Active Empathic Listening Scale (AELS)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test), after 4 weeks of empathic listening training (mid-intervention) and after the 4 weeks of compassionate listening training (post-test 1 & 2)
Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)
Egocentric Social Network Analysis Paradigm (e-SNAP)
Timeframe: Assessed at baseline (pre-test) and after the 8-week intervention period (post-test 1 & 2)